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Photons have both inertial and gravitational mass (even though they have zero rest mass) and exhibit all the characteristics of material bodies. Electromagnetism is as material as breath, and an equally incredible candidate for the vital field.

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Jung stated, ‘The idea of transformation and renewal by means of the serpent is a well-substantiated archetype. It is [a] healing [symbol]’ (Jung 7, par. 184)

The Ouroboros, or Snakes as Symbols of Spiritual Growth and Transformation

The ouroboros, the snake forever swallowing its own tail, is a famous alchemical symbol of transformation. Jung saw the ouroboros much like he saw the mandala, as an archetypal template of the psyche symbolizing eternity and the law of endless return. Instead of looking at life as a finite game played between the bookends of birth and death, the ouroboros symbolizes a dynamic state of change and purification.

A literal ouroboros isn’t necessary for a dream to have its symbolic meaning. Since waking life snakes routinely shed their skins, they are ready made symbols for change and transformation. Dreams where snakes shed skin or seeing snake skins in a dream also symbolize change and transformation. Old, outgrown behavioral patterns, relationships, or even careers may be sloughed off in favor of a new skin more appropriate to the dreamer’s growth.

This process of adjustment may not be comfortable. In waking life, snakes get cranky and irritable during the shedding process and the same may be true for the dreamer. All change involves the surrender of the comfortable and even when changes promise progress, trading the known for the unknown involves a disquieting abandonment of the familiar.

Dream Snakes as Fear Symbols

A lack of firsthand experience with snakes makes the serpent a creature representing a fear of the unknown. As such, snake dreams symbolize that unknown fear. The fear can be an intuitive warning or an unfounded anxiety about some undefinable, hidden something awaiting the dreamer in waking life.

Honest analysis of the waking life provides the key to deciphering snake dreams. Pursuing a life dream, especially an untried one, involves fear. It is tantamount that the dreamer considers whether that fear is founded, or if irrational anxiety is threatening the realization of a waking life dream.

I have been There before in dreams. This Twilight Kingdom exists unbounded to time and space, residing in the immutable framework of what remains when the constructs and illusions of permanence all fall down. The infinite potential of its landscape is an eternal ideology. There exists in perpetual obliquity: There is, independent from the tenants and dwellers, thoughts and ideas, that There supports.

I am Transient. My lifeline is a current that flows through the creek of a the crease between the layers of a folded world: the realms of Energy and Matter, or more lucidly, the realm of appearances and the realm of the illusion of appearances.

My life struggles to collect cohesive presence in either world all together. Thoughts, behaviors and cognitions can communicate beyond the divide but this has its disadvantages. Every thought falls from beyond the shadow of a doubt. Every feeling feigns an hysteric syndrome of unjustified dismissiveness, leading to sentimental expression weighted with the conviction of a parachute, fastened to pack a punch in its articulation on the masked backs of thoughts or behaviors in order to cross back into the common reality. Typically, I express my feelings into the common reality using the cognitive-behavior anchor points grounded there. Thus, how I feel makes itself known in the common reality as either pieces of jigsaw logic or hasty, impulsive reactivity. Feelings are more often than not the odd man out left alone in a world outside of time in infinite space. As a transient, I have gained access to trespass beyond the partisan, corporeal divide.

Here I appear again, as soon as I loop-swoop-disappear from There. What am I? A flippant holographic effect? An illusion? A lucid shoelace? A Pioneer? A purl stitch? Imagination my engine, feelings fuel the timeless travel, and a secret is masked behind the sensation that I am just as alive as a fragment of imagination as I am in this freckled sack of skin and bones.

I have been to this timeless location before, specifically. The dream is recurring with more depth and detail each time. Last night I was aware that I was dreaming: a transient dream and transient state, a Wanderer into a permanent place.

For this reason, my subjection to my fear informed me that I am part of the corporeal, common reality world, simultaneously. There is void of fear. The present absence of fear stands out like silence within a song. I pause and my heart palpates as if it were compassionate for the stillness set in the lack of beat outside of myself, accordingly. The Fearless face There inform me that because I am experiencing fear There because I perceive the contact with one archetype that served as a fear evoking stimulus. My ear would fall deaf to the cry of my fear if my fear realized its own petty perception. If I could activate my 3rd eye to see the invisible presence of the great everything, I would see that the one fearful stimulus is actually everywhere, and all around me.

There was a snake by my foot in the dark, dusk lair of There. I was within the confines of my landlords dilapidated wooden, sunken ship of a broken series of bungalow settlements. There was a snake by my foot and I yelp for my landlords help in fear. He was working on a mast to mask the gusts of harsh winds from breaking an entry in the form of a great howl through the cracks between the wooden panels. He mentioned something about filtering magnesium and oxides through the mast (magnesium trapper) that the wind carries. This, he said definitively, is for our own protection. He laughed at my irrational fear. Look around you, he said. You are surrounded by snakes. I did look, and I was surrounded by an astounding patchwork of piles of coiled snakes. He grins. How dumb to be scared of just one snake, that one snake, he said pointing to my original referent. You see one, fear that one, and are too blind to notice that what you fear is so much greater, the fears lie in piles around you. He said all of this with no fear of his pant leg touching the rattler of a snake. Get over your fear, and you can be free.

I have been There before in dreams, and I am positive that this Twilight Kingdom exists beyond the relative: I think it exists; therefore it exists. Perhaps There is an archetypal idea, and the infinite potential of its landscape is an eternal ideology. Existing in perpetual obliquity: There is, independent from the tenants and dwellers, thoughts and ideas, There supports.

I am Transient. My lifeline walks the crease between the layers of a folded world: the realms of Energy and Matter, or much lucidly, the realm of appearances and the realm of the illusion of appearances. My life struggles to collect cohesive presence in either world all together. Thoughts, behaviors and cognitions can communicate beyond the divide but this has its disadvantages. Every thought falls from beyond the shadow of a doubt, every feeling feigns an hysteric syndrome of unjustified , leading to sentimental expression weighted with the conviction of a parachute, fastened to pack a punch in its articulation on the masked backs of thoughts or behaviors in order to cross back into the common reality. Typically, I express my feelings as either intellectualized pieces of jigsaw logic or brewed into a hasty impulsive reaction. Feelings are more often than not the odd man out left alone in a world outside of time in infinite space. As a transient, I have gained access to trespass beyond the partisan, corporeal divide.

Here again as soon as I loop, swoop pulled out of There: a lucid shoelace, a purl stitch. Imagination my engine, feelings fuel the timeless travel, and a secret is masked behind the sensation that I am just as alive as a fragment of imagination as I am in this freckled sack of skin and bones.

I have been to this timeless location before, specifically. The dream is recurring with more depth and detail each time. Last night I was aware that I was dreaming, a transient dream in a transient state as a transient passerby. For this reason, my feeling of fear informed me I was part of the corporeal, reality world, simultaneously. The people with no fear in this told me it was because I was experiencing contact with one archetype and I would numb to the fear if my fear realized its own petty perception and that the fearful stimulus as all around me. There was a snake by my foot in the dark, duck lair of this dream. I was my landlords dilapidated wooden sunken ship of a broken series of bungalow settlements. There was a snake by my foot and I yelp for my landlords help in fear. He was working on a mast to mask the gusts of harsh wind from breaking an entry in the form of a great howl through the cracks between the wooden panels. He mentioned something about filtering magnesium and oxides through the mast (magnesium trapper) that the wind carries. This, he said definitively, is for our own protection. He laughed at my irrational fear. Look around you he said. You are surrounded by snakes. I did look, and I was surrounded by an astounding patchwork of piles of coiled snakes. He grins. How dumb to be scared of just one snake, that one snake, he said pointing to my original referent. You see one, fear that one, and are too blind to notice that what you fear is so much greater, the fears lie in piles around you. He said all of this with no fear of his pant leg touching the rattler of a snake. Get over your fear, and you can be free.

As a USC student, I was able to make my way through the crowd and attain a prime patch of grass for viewing the rock concert–I mean, president’s speech. I voted for Obama, and I still support Obama today; however, I was extremely disappointed to see the attention of so many people be squandered with bread and circus entertainment before Obama spoke, and the further squandered of any opportunity to educate the voters with non-partisan information to prepare us to vote is a just system.

The Dalai Lama recently visited Stanford University and spoke on the centrality of compassion for the future of human society. In this talk he addresses the importance of educating all people about practicing compassion and using the mind to understand the views of others. He talks about his interest in science and how neuroscience is connecting with religion on the importance of mind in relation to holistic health. The Dalai Lama feels that cultivating compassion in the mind should no longer be confined to religion, but needs to be taught in the secular arena and backed up with scientific research. At the end of the talk he answers a number of questions from the audience.

I want to know everything that the celestial and terrestrial symbols expressed the moment I emerged in this life. She who gives birth to life. The divine feminine. What question is the point and purpose of this quest called life? What does it mean to be to a yolk and born through umbilical cord connection into an egg of my own, now an energy bean and body to carry the yoke that I essentially am. The continuity of soul is an elastic coil, both infinite and cyclical.

Perhaps besheret, or soul mate, is the dark matter one is winding or bending around and with through life and lifetimes and time and space: the missing half of ones double helix.

When I die, the egg deteriorates and the yoke carries on once again in the form of energy and potential. Life is, always and forever. Living and dying is the way of the world according the human creatures limited eyesight.

Observations, measurement and patterns: the method through which society acrews a body of knowledge is based on that which has physical properties and presence. The knowable and the physical. The artist carries the wind and the whimsical, exploring through the sensation of the invisible connections and networks, transformations, re-arrangements and transmutations, for which no scale or ruler can be applied.

I align myself in a dream reality where both apply. And often, very often, I am misunderstood. The weight of silence and smoke; the charge and spark of magnetic attractions, the gravity of truth: my method for knowing is both scientific and supernatural, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Perplexed by “Nonplussed” and “Bemused”

Yesterday, our “Editorial Emergency” duo of Simon Glickman and Julia Rubiner launched a salvo against a common usage of the word nonplussed, a word they “wager more people get wrong than right.” That opens an interesting can of worms: if a word or phrase used to have Meaning A, but more people now use it with Meaning B, is it time for the Meaning A folks to stand aside?

In the case of nonplussed, the old meaning is “bewildered,” while the new meaning is “unfazed.” Simon and Julia aren’t the only ones bewildered by the change of meaning. Meghan Daum, writing in the Los Angeles Times, was similarly disappointed by Barack Obama’s use of the “unfazed” sense of the word when he said of his daughters’ response to media scrutiny, “I’ve been really happy by how nonplussed they’ve been by the whole thing.” Daum despairs, “Et tu, Obama? It seems so.”

For her L.A. Times piece, Daum consulted with University Pennsylvania linguist Mark Liberman, who ended up posting his response (as well as a follow-up) on the group blog Language Log (where I also contribute). Liberman covers the historical developments well, but commenters on his post, much like those on Simon and Julia’s article, were sharply divided about whether we should simply accept the new meaning of nonplussed as part of our ever-changing language.

A similar case was discussed on Sunday by Jan Freeman in her Boston Globelanguage column, again involving a term related to Obama. Freeman observes that “a lot of writers have thought bemused was just the right word for Barack Obama’s benign, unruffled presence, especially in the debates with John McCain.” As the Visual Thesaurus wordmap for bemused indicates, the two primary meanings of bemused are “deeply absorbed in thought” or “perplexed by many conflicting situations or statements.” The way that political reporters have used it about Obama, however, is “above it all, with a trace of amusement,” in the words of New York Times deputy news editorPhilip B. Corbett. Corbett adds, “but that’s not what bemused means.” Well, it’s not what the word has historicallymeant, but the newer sense, influenced by amused, has become mainstream enough to enter some dictionaries, including Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate.

So here we have two words that have traditionally meant something like “bewildered” or “perplexed,” but they’ve each veered off in different semantic directions — one towards resolute calmness (nonplussed) and the other towards mild amusement (bemused). How common do these new meanings need to become before they can be accepted as standard and conventional, appropriate for good writing and speaking? In the eyes of the Merriam-Webster lexicographers, the new sense of bemused has already reached that point, but the new sense of nonplussedis not quite there.

Even if these newer senses become enshrined in the major dictionaries, that won’t be much solace to those with a more traditionalist take on language, who would see the semantic drift as mere error. We’re left with words that are difficult to use in either the old or the new way: if you use the traditional meaning, you might confuse those who are unfamiliar with with it, and if you use the newer meaning, you might annoy those who feel that the meaning is wrong. Bryan Garner, in his book Garner’s Modern American Usage, refers to such words as “skunked terms”:

When a word undergoes a marked change from one use to another — a phase that might take ten years or a hundred — it’s likely to be the subject of dispute. Some people (Group 1) insist on the traditional use; others (Group 2) embrace the new use. … A word is most hotly disputed in the middle part of this process: any use of it is likely to distract some readers. The new use seems illiterate to Group 1; the old use seems odd to Group 2. The word has become “skunked.”

“Skunked terms” on Garner’s list include data, decimate, effete, enormity, fulsome, and that old usage bugaboo,hopefully. Each of these items has undergone a transformation similar to nonplussed and bemused. Garner’s advice for dealing with skunked terms is one of avoidance: “To the writer or speaker for whom credibility is important, it’s a good idea to avoid distracting any readers or listeners — whether they’re in Group 1 or Group 2.”

What do Group 1-ers and Group 2-ers think? Are these troublesome words best left unused until their meanings become more settled? Should we preserve the old, embrace the new, or attempt to do both?

The police and neighborhood watch are treating my neighborhood like Gotham City: knocks on the front door, flyers and phone calls, and email with subject line: surveillance have bombarded my house for the past few weeks. The incoming word, in short: there are sex offenders, lurking, strolling and seeking adult services at a house near you! During my daily walks, I have noticed an increase of adult men walking during all hours. Weather the alerts and my observations are related, who is to know.

I am looping my way home. The time is around 5:30 pm, and the hot sun shines bright lights upon every blade of glass canopys of street lined trees don’t umbrella. I was thinking about an email I received earlier during the day, an update from neighborhood watch on aforementioned matters. I was feeling unsettled, and trying to sort out why the email made me uncomfortable more so than the content in the email itself. There is a hunt for predators, and because no one knows the faces for sure, all people who match the profile are like lepers walking around here. And here I find what about the email made me uneasy: the assumption that now, educated with the information, I was to assume the same judgment based on others’ fear, profiles, and precautionary, accusatory inductive judgment. I don’t like the logic of inductive judgment. What happened to innocent until proven otherwise? And even the people who are guilty, I do not want to judge: no one person in this world is solely a sex offender, the whole person is immensely more expansive and deep than a legal or behavioral label–not to excuse causing harm, but also, not to assume it and fear it.

My thoughts were interrupted by a man walking alone, a man who I have seen before on these street a handful of time walking alone. I stopped thinking and began observing, as he was a half of a block ahead of me and we held the same pace. His left foot kicked like there was a rock in his shoe, which was counter balanced by an overly weighting swing of a flat palmed right hand. The unbalanced foot and hand were not so much orchestrated like clamor in tandem, but rather, outbursts of simultaneous idiosyncracies. As we walked down the main road, he would divet into the first few feet of a cross street, walk straight, and then divet out again to the main road sidewalk: a compulsive performance of an illogical formula.

After a few minutes of observing, my old thought string reentered my internal discourse. Sex offenders. I crossed to the other side of the road. I resented myself, loathed myself, judged myself, for every step I took crossing the street, as my pace was beginning to gain speed on his. I was judging the man for fitting a profile, then avoiding him like being close to him was a potential threat to my well-being. Like we weren’t made from the same stuff. Like we had different values or intentions. And I felt horrible about myself.

Then, it dawned upon me, that perhaps I had not been brainwashed by emails and cautionary flyers, and that I had moved because of my own discomfort for the unbalanced and compulsive nature I observed. Yes. I Intellectualized and explained to myself the reality of my judgment: the swinging right hand out of balance is an ipsolateral connection to the left side of the brain, and combined with his compulsive tendencies, naturally I would assume there is something not right in his left hemisphere, where reason and logic are conscious.

A moment after feeling the relief of resolution, and the unclenching jaw of self ridicule and judgment for profiling, I realized that I had tricked myself with a justification. I had re written my reaction to suit the beliefs and values I’d like to think that I hold always, and consider the cornerstone of my character and integrity. What I really did was move because he fit the profile I had been told to assume was dangerous. Imagine, I thought to myself, if the time and place were different I was told to fear another race instead of a sex offender. The principle would be the same: avoid the other for your safety. And I acted as a precautionary measure. My behavior was a reaction to align itself with my thoughts.

I stood at the front door of my house and sighed. There is no way to know if my judgement was based on anything but my own assumption of others fear, my own profiling, or my own intuitive perceptions and observations. Perhaps a combination of them all. I only can know that I judged and moved further away from another person, and judged myself for that judgment. I wrote this all free write as soon as I stepped inside my home as way to understand myself and avoid any lasting self judgement: I do not want to judge myself or others, and it all begins to blend into understanding when knowledge of self increases with reflection, and I look inwardly with compassion in hopes that the same gaze will look with new fresh eyes out into the world on my next walk.

The philosophical statement and the concept of a fish fit into a common associative category, or at least, it feels like the two fit together better than they don’t fit together.

I’m still reading Memories, Dreams & Reflections by Carl Jung, and once again, a simple statement he made in passing warped my mind into a whirlpool. He was describing a dream of his with a fish which he referred to as “…an unconscious and mute fish…”

It seems strange to me that unconscious and mute were explicitly stated: both are implicit assumptions when conceptualizing a fish. From there my mind wandered, wondering if unconscious and mute were used to describe the fish as a literary function, like an inverted mirror, functioning to point out to the reader that the non-fish and human characters in the dream are vocal and conscious creatures.

When you stare out into the universe, the universe stares back; however, the sense or feeling of the universe staring back is elusive and evades all quantification and calculations that could prove this using the scientific method. Such is the way of transcendental beliefs and a test of spiritual resolve: faith is acknowledged in silence.

A fish underwater may stare at the surface, and from above one may stare back. However, the mute and unconscious fish does not know the presence as the presence knows it, sensing it yet not with a mutual understanding.

Infinity is two-sided. Staring into the universe is the infinite, and staring into the unconscious is infinitesimal: macro and micro representations of infinity.

Truth is constantly unfolding, and at this moment the above statement is my closest understanding in investigating my associate between the philosophical statement and the idea of a fish.